Post publisher to serve 29 months

December 17, 2007 10:00am

Former Jerusalem Post publisher David Radler was sentenced to 29 months in prison.

Radler accepted a plea bargain, cooperating with a federal investigation of the fraud scheme at his former company, Hollinger International Inc. He pleaded guilty to bilking company shareholders of millions of dollars in exchange for cutting his prison sentence in half.

Radler was also fined $250,000. He had paid $53 million in restitution to Hollinger shareholders.

His longtime business partner, Conrad Black, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison and ordered to pay $6.1 million in restitution last week after pleading guilty to three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.

Radler was openly apologetic when he appeared in federal court in Chicago for sentencing Monday morning.

“I made mistakes and hurt me and my family and others,” he told the court. “I am sorry for what I’ve done.”

Radler and Black had been business associates for 40 years, since they invested in a small English-language daily in Quebec when they were in their 20s.

U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve said the evidence showed Radler was “at least as culpable as Black in the fraud,” the Chicago Tribune reported, but Radler’s testimony against four of his former colleagues was instrumental in their convictions.